


its roots in the ground and its branches in the air, a tree is pulled in two directions

by Loran_Arameri



Category: Marvel 616
Genre: Additional Information in Author's Note, Angst, Animal Death, Background Sue Storm/Victor von Doom, Botanical Metaphors Before Sex, Dubious Consent, God Emperor Doom, M/M, Power Imbalance, Rape Roleplay, Religious Metaphors During Sex, Rough Sex, Secret Wars (2015), Sheriff Strange, Under-negotiated Kink, Unhappy Ending, detailed descriptions of scars, divine retribution, no one is cheating though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:47:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26480638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loran_Arameri/pseuds/Loran_Arameri
Summary: Battleworld is a contradiction of permanent conflict and stability. Stephen has lived with that for eight years and equally so with its ruler. When a seemingly inconsequential event makes the god emperor deepen the relationship with his sheriff, Stephen can’t be sure that the rules he has lived by are still accurate.
Relationships: Stephen Strange/Victor von Doom
Comments: 7
Kudos: 16





	its roots in the ground and its branches in the air, a tree is pulled in two directions

**Author's Note:**

> First things first, this fic would not exist without [the casual cheesecake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_casual_cheesecake/pseuds/the_casual_cheesecake). She was there from the first idea, over the whole writing process, did beta and a lot of handholding. I really can’t thank her enough.  
> [Mizzy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mizzy/pseuds/Mizzy) came in when I was really frustrated in the editing process and gently pushed me in the right direction again and also did a lot of handholding.
> 
> Regarding the warning tags on this fic, in all scenes Stephen would say that he consents to what is happening after, but at one point he isn’t clear about it during the scene. Additionally, there is of course the power imbalance between a god and a mere human that complicates things further.  
> If you want or need additional information before reading, send me an ask or a DM.  
> Loran#5853 on Discord  
> [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/loraneldin)  
> [Pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.social/Loran)
> 
> Title from the poem _War of the Foxes_ by Richard Siken.

For a planet in eternal conflict, Battleworld is in the habit of generating few surprises. Still, this morning holds several of them for Stephen. The first of them doesn’t even wait until the sun has lifted from the horizon; god is waiting for him on one of the balconies overlooking the gardens. 

Stephen knows that it is not the new unrest in Greenland he has been called here for, nor is it anything he or the Thors have their eye on. As much as he sees what is happening in all of Battleworld, his methods to know what is going through the heart and mind of the man before him are different, conjecture to a degree, but usually they are on point, if Stephen says so himself. However, today the signs are not conclusive; god appears calm but the need to discuss at this early hour speaks of urgency

“My lord.” There is no indication that god has heard him and no possibility that he has not.  
Silence can have many meanings these days, but anger is not one of them. It would make itself known immediately. 

God is gazing over his gardens and, beyond them, over his town and his domain. Over the physical manifestation of his will. Contemplation is something Doom has always been prone to, but it has taken on another quality in this new world.

“Stephen.” When god turns to his Sheriff, the mask is what it always is. Stephen determines deeper meanings from posture, tone of voice, and what he is able to read in those eyes. It’s not something he would have thought to become an expert in, but eight years and one creation myth later, he knows that something has moved his god. There is no urgency, nothing that makes Stephen think he should start to rally forces, but he knows that whatever has changed will have influence on all life in the universe from this day on. Such is living in a world where god is a man with moods like any other.

“I visited the Valley of Doom.” 

Stephen is not always informed of god’s plans and movements. That idea is preposterous. Still, this outing is unusual. “Why?”

“What good is a creation when its creator turns his back on it? The view from the Savage Mountains is something that has no comparison. Not on Latverion—and not anywhere else.” There is pride in his words. Not of the kind that boisterously claims attention, but a more calm and satisfied variety. 

“You did good,” Stephen confirms.

“We did.” 

They did. The best they could at least. 

God sighs, and the weightlessness of the moment dissipates. “On my way back I encountered a man. It was hardly more than a nuisance, but I thought you would like to know.” He holds out a hand, and Stephen reaches to receive whatever god is handing him before he can even ask himself what it might be. It is small, cold, and Stephen knows what it is, understands the magnitude of this predawn meeting, before the power registers, before his eyes can take in its shape and color. An infinity gem, that universe’s reality stone. It’s useless here but still alive like all of them are. Conflicting emotions and urgencies rise up, but only those of god’s sheriff belong in this place.

“The man? Do I need—”

“He is dead. There was no point in bothering you.”

“You just called me here to give me a useless gem for safekeeping?” 

There is no change in god’s attitude. If anything, it has gotten harder over the years to unsettle him, but then there are not any challenges left to accomplish the task.

“Who else would I give it to?”

* * *

The gem sits on the desk in Stephen’s study, not more dangerous than anything else there. Powerful, but not in this place, at this time. It’s a remnant of a different world, an artifact left without its brethren.

Everyone has a role to play in Battleworld, and this reality gem doesn’t lament its new life as a paperweight.

Stephen’s mind wanders to the set of six that is hidden on his island, hidden from the world, hidden from god; the island which Doom created for his sheriff, because Doom knows a sorcerer needs a sanctum. 

In a world that is constantly fighting for the upper hand, Doom handed Stephen the tools to defy him and never asked about them once.

Stephen can interpret what is going through god’s head with confidence, but he can predict what is not on god’s mind with perfection. If he ever found what was hidden in the Sanctum, Stephen would know. There would be no remedy to quell god’s wrath. 

A knock on the door heralds one of the servants asking for Stephen’s presence in Doom’s personal chambers; the second summoning this day, one before dawn and one after. Maybe the gem has more power than Stephen thought. Its appearance, seemingly of little consequence at first, is like a pebble thrown into a pond. The ripples are extending through this day, from the Valley of Doom to Doomstadt, gathering force and speed over distance and time. There is no way of knowing if the waves will crash to shore harmlessly or if they are about to drag things with them that would have better been lost at sea.

When Stephen enters Doom’s chambers, he is alone. Once, that might have felt wrong but everything is Doom’s domain, and god can’t be everywhere at once. The room bears a familiarity; it hasn’t changed in eight years, nothing wears or breaks. Seats, tables, settee, desk, chair, everything as Doom intended. His world, perfect. 

Galactus’ flames shine through the windows, painting shadows along the walls that can’t be illuminated by the candles within. Stephen loses himself in the view until he hears a sound. Doom enters, and Stephen steps away from the window so as to not block the light out any longer. The god emperor takes no notice of any of that.

Stephen falls back on the only thing that this summon could be about. “The gem. We will need to see if there are others in the domain. I didn’t expect any to turn up after that long a time. They tend to attract attention—”

“If you must. The gems don’t worry me.”

“Will you tell me then what concerns you, my lord? Because a guessing game might take all night.”

The huff of breath cuts over the edge of his mask, and Stephen wonders if it would have been audible at all without it.

“You seem to be in a good mood. Will you enlighten me or am I to divine the cause for that too?”

Doom steps to the middle of the room, and if Stephen thought him unmoved by finding an object of immense power and the consequential execution of a man, he now sees the difference. Purpose has found its way back into Victor’s step, his posture thrums with it. It raises the hairs on the back of Stephen’s neck, no matter how familiar.

“This morning, you asked why I left Doomstadt just to contemplate my world.”

“And you gave me an answer.”

“This world needs the attention of its creator. This is one side.”

“Victor—”

“You’ll have your time to react.” Victor speaks lightly, without pressure. Whatever he is going to say has been thought through and he is now letting Stephen in on his findings. “A man is mirrored in his life’s work. If he seeks for answers, there is no one who can give the insights that he can get from taking his questions to the products of his hands and mind. However, a creation can never be a peer. As much as it can tell about the past and where it led us, it holds no truth about the future.”

“Only returning back here, I found what I had unknowingly been looking for. Not the things that were made to satisfy the needs of the people; creations perfected out of necessity, born from charity for there was no alternative to Doom. There is a single thing in this world that didn’t spring from that. It deserves the attention of a god.”

There is leisure in Doom’s steps as he draws ever closer. As much as Stephen knows every gesture, every lilt, every way the lines around those eyes wrinkle, this is new. God’s gloved hand comes to rest on his shoulder, digging into the muscle with the weight of what Stephen doesn’t know.

“If this was supposed to tell me what conclusion you found today, it didn’t.”

“There is nothing that I wish to keep from you. We may disagree at times, but does it matter here?” The light from the window draws flickering shadows across god’s mask. His hand lifts from Stephen, and he thinks they might steer back into known waters when Victor opens the buckle of Stephen’s doublet instead. 

Stephen has no point of reference for this, no idea where it is coming from. A thousand questions, suggestions, and objections that don’t even convince himself flood his head at once, but of all things, his mind catches on only the one. “What about Susan?” 

Victor’s hands do not falter. “There is nothing here that concerns my marriage. She is my wife, but it's a different history we share.”

“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” Stephen concludes, testing the words and finding them settling his inner prosecutor.

After he has opened every part of Stephen's clothing that he possibly could, god’s hands again retreat, the left removing the glove of the right. 

Stephen is his god’s sheriff, upholding the law and with it Doom, because the land is its ruler, and one can’t thrive without the other. This has become his creed. If this is what will keep them on this track, he won’t deny it. There is still a lingering feeling of the world tilting off its axis, but the sensation of falling can be thrilling in the best and worst way at once. 

God steps closer one more time and grips Stephen where he has hardened. Stephen gasps; the skin touching him is hotter than he expected. Stephen’s heart beats as if trying to flee his chest. Slow strokes let his cock fill up completely.

“You haven’t stumbled on this path even once in all those years. Was it because you knew where it leads?” God is musing, but not pausing for Stephen to answer. “I’m not omniscient but you do have an all-seeing eye.”

Just as the friction is bordering on too much, Victor’s hand becomes wet and slick. God’s eyes still rest on Stephen’s face, as if it is telling him all that he needs to know. Stephen can’t hold back a keening sound, doesn’t think that Victor would want him to. Afterall, Stephen thinks dizzly, god has all the power, and this is what he chooses to do with it. The left hand settles on his shoulder again, steadying him as the other is tilting their world into a new balance. Now, this is god's too.

“All this time, I have been looking for the thing I’ve been missing. However, it wasn’t lost to me, just hidden.” Victor speaks like he is imparting great wisdom, no hint of him noticing that he is making Stephen go out of his mind with pleasure, tearing the tethers of what he thought he knew with pure bliss. “There is no one else like us here, no one like me.”

The feeling has fled most of Stephen’s body, leaving behind a lightness that is only mitigated by the two points of contact that are keeping him upright. Victor changes the angle of his hand constantly, no possibility for any one movement to bring him too far yet; his fingers cradling Stephen’s balls or a hand just pressed against his shaft or slow measured strokes along all of his length. It’s intimate in its carnality. It should be foreign, but how could it be between god and his first subject.

The glove on Stephen’s shoulder is firmly imposing Doom’s will, and he thinks he can feel the leather’s structure through the cloth there. Without thinking he presses his cheek against it, the folds digging into his skin. He wishes that Victor would switch hands. 

He should offer a prayer and he may receive, but what can you ask for when you have god’s full attention. Stephen gets blessed by the leather-clad left returning his contact, before folding around his neck. All he can see is white; god illuminated by Galactus, reduced to a nightlight. God’s mask and cloak and armor, all of him luminous, blinding although the light is low. It’s too much. 

And god knows because he pulls Stephen’s head forward to lean where the armor is softened up by several layers of cloth over the shoulders. Stephen sighs into him, and it feels like a ritual, cleaning away the sins that Stephen has to take in, judge, and execute every day. Victor’s hand on his cock promises sweet absolution. All it demands is total devotion. Stephen wants to give it, wishes it was his to give, covets god’s love so much it hurts. 

Doom is merciful, and although Stephen can’t give all of himself–-visions of a gauntlet and stone beasts flicker through his mind’s eye for fractions of a second–-the strokes get stricter, striving to have Stephen at least lose part of himself. 

“Sometimes even a god has to let things grow on their own,” Victor speaks into his ear, and although it is only a whisper, it has the full power of his will behind it. “We won’t need to mourn the time it took when there is an infinity ahead of us.”

There is no air in Stephen’s lungs left for affirmation, but Victor doesn’t need it. He has Stephen’s head held in supplication, and his hand knows every fiber of Stephen’s being, working him into absolute bliss. 

The thought that he is coming on god’s hand, and possibly his armor, is passing somewhere in the distance; he isn’t even mortified when his knees give out and the same arms that put him in this state press him against the solid mass that is Victor. Stephen would probably have stayed in mental limbo, right outside the need to contemplate what just happened, what this was and what it meant. He would have dwelled in the dominance of physical bliss over puny thoughts and concern; let himself be held up, with no need to put that burden on his own legs. But, in the end, the shock of his over-sensitive cock being pushed against cold steel sobers him up.

* * *

Stephen leaves. Where there is one gem, no one can be sure there aren’t more. He takes the reality stone with him. There is no way to detect any given set of them—Stephen is sure of that—but one might help to find more of the same. He doesn’t think about what has happened in Doomstadt, faces this new task, knowing that a large part of his motivation is avoidance of facing what happened. He doesn’t look too close at how large that part really is. 

The Valley of Doom is what it has been since its creation. For the last eight years. Forever.

The inhabitants of this part of Battleworld live a simple life. Stephen is careful not to encroach. Some people do better with no signal that their beliefs are true. 

The place that Victor was attacked at is remarkably traceless of any sign that it happened. Bushes bend low in the wind that is hissing around the mountainside. Stephen’s third eye sees the remnants of divine intervention, but nothing is left of the man that held the gem. There is no place for the memory of those that oppose god.

There is nothing at all that could be useful in any way, yet Stephen keeps on looking anyway at the traces of Victor. He is in everything as this is his world, but here his presence is preeminent. Over the years it has become obvious that as much as the machinations of the barons and even smaller people can’t touch Victor, he still meditates over the source of them in his otherwise perfect world. Meditates on the failure of it not being stable without his steadying hand. A steadying hand that Victor despite everything is never slow to apply, as the assailant painfully discovered. Knowing Victor, Stephen is sure that it was painful.

Unbidden, his thoughts go back to Doomstadt and the last night. Bowing to god is what his Sheriff is supposed to do; Stephen has chosen that fate himself. He’s one of very few people who are able to disagree with god and survive, but desiring him may be close to madness. God’s sheriff is devoted to god and country but Stephen harbors a second set of loyalties.

The reality stone thrums where it is hidden, pulsing with energy now that it’s in the right place. Unable to be still when change lies within its power. Stephen doesn’t take it out.

There is not a lot left to do. He checks in with the baron’s whose domains border on the Valley of Doom. He instructs them to be on the lookout for smuggled wares. Baroness Khonshu of Egyptia is the one most pleasant to deal with out of all of them, not because of her lovely personality but because her appearance doesn’t set free a pack of haunting memories. 

He makes part of the travel by conventional means, ordering two Thors to his side, taking his time. He sends them back when they are done in Technopolis and visits the Isle of Agamotto alone.

Nothing here is influenced by the development of the last week. Nothing about Stephen’s position, about his resolution, has changed. Still, he checks on all the arrangements he has made. They are for a different world. Probably for other people too. There is no way of knowing that the gauntlet will ever be of use, but Stephen can’t let go of the idea that it might. He confirms what he already knows. With the knowledge of everything in place, he does his best to forget about it again. 

Instead he finally faces the things that have been fermenting in his mind. The years since Battleworld began have given new purpose to both Victor and Stephen. It also brought them closer, but Stephen hasn’t lost himself in his role; the sanctum is there to remind him of that. At the same time he is god’s sheriff and that is as important as it is that Victor is god. Stability out of chaos is possible because they are the world’s resting points. If something can firm that basis, Stephen won’t stand against it.

He puts the reality stone into the collection of things from before and returns to Doomstadt.

* * *

The servant he sent to inform Victor of his return is sent back with a summons for him. Stephen knows that the god emperor is not anxious to hear about the absence of further gems in the Valley of Doom. His venture has given Stephen enough time to contemplate the developments, and he has reached balance again.

No one else besides them is in the throne room when Stephen enters. God looks prepared for a confrontation. Victor’s sprawl on the throne is less relaxed than usual, parts of his mask hidden by the shadow of his hood. Stephen was gone a long while, on a mission Victor surely considers futile. Stephen is looking forward to having to explain himself.

“All is well on Battleworld,” Stephen starts. If there is surprise about him conveying positive reports for once, Victor doesn’t show it. He steps ever closer, reaching and surpassing his usual spot. God is stiller than should be possible for a man; the root of the universe at its core and everything moving outwards from him while he is ever immovable. Not its heart but its spine, keeping it upright, protecting and supporting so everything else can live. 

Stephen’s first step over one of Yggdrasil’s roots is what solicits a reaction. Victor’s arms straightening, moving subtly in his direction, and opening up god’s presence at the same time. It would draw Stephen in if he wasn’t already set on this course before. He stops when only one last step up is between them. 

“I took care of the world, I will now do the same for its god.” He closes the last bit of distance by going to his knees on the root at Victor's feet. He hadn’t been sure before that there was enough space for it. He should have known that there will always be room to kneel before god.

There is no hardship in it, no indignity if he doesn’t let it be. Stephen presides over religion on Battleworld, which makes him god’s highest servant, so serve he will. It’s an honor considering the uniqueness of his position. As much as Stephen knew the man that god was before, right here and now his radiance feels like a divine apparition.

From down where Stephen kneels Victor’s mask is no longer partly hidden by his hood, all of his glory bared for Stephen to take in. Peripherally, he notices Victor’s knees falling impossibly wider. It’s as much welcome as he gets, and it’s enough. He sits back on his haunches, lowering himself even more and removes his gloves one after the other, putting them down on the floor behind him. Victor’s eyes are trailing the movements and the ones that follow, taking in Stephen’s attempt at ceremony, the care with which he strokes the leather before he opens the buckle, the precision of folding belt and cloth to the side. Stephen counters the tremble in his hands by making the movements swift and decisive. God’s tools may be imperfect due to their nature, but in serving him they become divine. 

If Victor was standing, Stephen could remove the cloth completely, fold it, and put it up on one of the roots. The way it is, it still reveals the shining metal parts that have been hidden away from him for years. Hidden to the world, in fact, but Stephen is unable to see it as anything but personal. He is not sure if it is the novelty or the actual anatomy of the armor that makes him lick his lips now. He notices too late that he has been staring, flicks his head up, but there is no new tension in the line of Victor’s shoulders. Instead, his head is slightly tilted, still watching. 

Stephen’s hands wander to metal hips, not lingering, not playing at being disinterested in the next part because there is no hiding his eagerness. However, the reverence he is feeling guides his hands as they glide over the shining curves in shaky lines. He takes a deep breath when he feels a small ledge surrounding the codpiece. Probing under it for something he isn’t even sure is there feels so intimate that he has to look up again. 

The god emperor’s shoulders are moving with every breath, his gaze feels smoldering, but for now, Stephen is still clear enough to know it could just be his own desire that is coursing through his veins. Keeping the eye contact, his fingers find the latches to both sides and even as he opens them with great care. The snapping sound echoing through the throneroom underlines how quiet they both have been. It reminds Stephen of where exactly they are. 

Stephen finally lowers his gaze; the codpiece comes away smoothly revealing Victor’s cock, dropping heavily from its comfortably padded confinement. Stephen is unable to raise his eyes, even as he asks, “May I?”

Victor’s cock jumps shortly, swelling even more.

“Stephen,” and he says and then after a moment, “You want this.” No question. Never a question. God isn’t omniscient, but asking for permission is beneath him. 

Still, Stephen has been gone for too long; god needs testament to his dedication. He should have known. It’s his role, knowing his god. Executing his will before god expresses it. Keeping the world in his image. It’s the role he chose.

“It’s all I want.” He bows down, catching god’s cock between his lips when it twitches again. 

As Victor’s voice sometimes revibrates through his armor, giving his words even more fortitude, so does his gasp now. Pride slithers into Stephen’s gut, and he commits that sound to memory, sure that he will be hard-pressed to ever warrant such a reaction again. 

Time isn’t an issue. There is no haste, nothing that would require anything but Stephen’s utmost attention to this task. He lavishes Victor’s cock with all that he has to give, inch by divine inch. The lack of response is to be expected from a man wearing a steel mask for comfort. It’s not required; Stephen’s on his knees out of devotion. The glide of Victor’s cock across his tongue, being able to taste (salt, metal, violets), to be closer than anyone else; it’s enough. The girth of Victor, fully hardened, makes Stephen’s jaw ache exquisitely. He dares to move his hands over the polished expanse of thigh and hip, being surprised by his own shudder. He doesn’t know where the urge originates, but he needs his lips to touch the hair at the root. They almost do, but his throat closing up, heaving, forces him to abort. 

The drive to try again is painful and only soothed when a gloved hand touches his cheek. The burning need is cooled and Victor’s eyes draw him in, impossibly more so than his cock. 

If Stephen believed it within Victor’s abilities, he would say there is a moment of hesitation before his thumb swipes over Stephen’s bottom lip. He opens his mouth, as they both knew he would. The disappointment of not getting a taste of it, not being able to map out the textured surface of the glove with his tongue, lasts only until Victor changes his grip and with steely gentleness guides him back down. 

Now that he doesn’t have to control his own movement anymore he has time to consider his own cock straining in his trousers. It’s all Victor’s, of him, for him. But Stephen can’t deceive himself with the notion that he is giving, and Victor is taking. If Victor is god, this is his blessing, and all it requires is for Stephen to accept it.

With Victor’s leather at the back of his head and his flesh before him, Stephen takes him in and glides as far as his body will let him. When he comes back up, the hand is a feather against his hair, and when he takes a deep breath, it rubs against his scalp, making him rest a moment longer. Victor hums.

The next glide down feels weightless. The slowness of it is decadent, but no one knows except for them. His throat opens up, and Victor’s hair against his nose makes him want to breathe in deeply, despite the impossibility of it.

It would be too easy to let go now. Let Victor give him rhythm, purpose. Lose himself in time, measured by the moments he gets up to breath, and space, limited by Victor surrounding him. Become Victor’s tool with no purpose or blame of his own. He never chose that route, and he won’t let this be different either. There are no bystanders in the creation of a world. Only one of them could take the power when everything ended, and it couldn’t be Stephen, but he didn’t turn his back on the world.

He lets Victor’s hands be his guide, the hums his incentive. But his purpose is his own. The pulse in his own cock drives him on, and for once, his hands beating their own rhythm against god’s armor don’t distract him. They are part of his display, and for a moment, he asks himself what it might look like from where Victor is sitting. If he can see the decision, the dedication, everything that has happened while Stephen was gone. If, while Stephen learned to read the moods of a god by the tilt of his head, his god learned to read his eye in the world all the same.

He needs Victor to come as he has never needed for anything in this world. It can be his answer. They aren’t equals, but there can be an equilibrium in this. It is just to love your god, and one shouldn’t expect an answer for one’s devotions, but here Stephen is on his knees and he knows it’s within his reach. 

He swallows all of Victor and works his throat, gets flushed with syrupy satisfaction when leather-clad fingers dig into his scalp. The smallest motion starts from Victor’s core, adding to the rhythm of Stephen swallowing. He knows it is only because Victor cannot avoid it any longer. The hums trickle away to long stretches of silence punctuated by bouts of air expelled from Victor’s mask; tension telling Stephen that Victor stops breathing too. 

Stephen wants to keep Victor as far down as he can go, wants to be the receptacle to god’s desire, and he almost succeeds. But willpower can only get you that far, and Stephen has to let go in order to breathe. Moving up, Victor chases the intimate connection for a moment longer and then is pouring on Stephen’s tongue and face before Stephen can dive back down to capture the still-spurting cock with his lips again. The precision of capturing the last drops and giving Victor more, ending before it is too much, makes Stephen think that it was maybe predetermined to be this way. God, for once at least, seems satisfied.

He retrieves the codpiece from the root it is placed on. Stephen reaches for it, holding his hands open, trusting that god won’t deny him that part of the ritual. He doesn’t and Stephen replaces the part, guiding Victor’s soft cock to its cushioned dwelling. Closing the clasps finishes the exercise.

Both of god’s gloved hands come to hold Stephen’s head. Brown eyes rove over Stephen’s face, and it is all that he can do to not close his own eyes. A swirl of purple flickers at the borders of his vision, and Stephen feels the absence of Victor’s come on his face, glad for the hands that are holding him steady. His cock is still throbbing. He hopes that Victor will let it be and not take that away also. 

“I’m glad that you are back.” 

Stephen is sure god is smiling.

* * *

In the days and weeks that follow, driven by Victor, their days take on a new shape. Filling them with Stephen’s new purpose, Victor does not give Stephen any more room for doubt.

The new dimension to their relationship filters into their days like they had been waiting to be filled with frivolities and carnality. It’s not that Stephen has taken on a new role; he is still Doom’s right hand, just more so. His Sheriff to the world, in the courtroom, in all proceedings, and now also in god’s private spaces. It’s not even the times that god likes to take his Sheriff in whatever capacity fits his mood that underline this fact. It’s the shared time that is spent with things that don’t require the presence of anyone else, and Stephen isn’t sure if he is an adornment to god’s studies and meals or if he has become an integral part of them. God spins him into phatic conversations, empty of any consequence, but time passes Stephen in unrecognizable speed in those moments, and he can’t say that either of them is bored.

Only the royal suite that is home to Susan and the kids is something that doesn’t belong in Stephen’s world even now. He is not excluded from it as much as there is no reason to visit it. He is not a servant, is nothing to them. What he does, he does with Victor alone in Victor’s spaces; Susan’s kingdom is closed even to her husband if he doesn’t have a purpose there. The royal family is a constellation of celestial bodies whose trajectories are influenced by each other, but only come close in periodic intervals.

Those inner workings are now laid bare to Stephen as he is too laid bare every day by his god, the shapes and forms that he saw of it before connecting to the foundation they rest on. Whatever the form of Victor and Sue’s interactions, the connection is strong enough that god tames his will if it seems to be what his wife expects of him and only then. 

Tonight, god is not with his family. He is having dinner in Stephen’s company at the loggia that is part of his private apartment. Roasted lamb because Victor’s tastes haven’t changed with his ascension, few things have. The demands of the world are debarred from this occasion, leaving them to exist in a state of suspension of their duties to it. This is, until a song carries up to them. It isn’t loud and the words ferried by it are illegible, but it doesn’t matter. Not if the melody is so familiar, at least to Stephen. He doubts anyone dared to actually sing it where god was able to hear before. The poor soul singing right now has to be mercifully unaware still. As the song gets louder and the words get clearer, god lays down his fork and tilts his head. Stephen watches, hears the words, and follows god’s gaze to where the evening sun is touching the horizon. 

“... the man in the sun—dared to rise up and spun—into god’s face—”

The song cuts off right in the middle of the verse, silence ringing out unnaturally. God’s hand is frozen in the motion that took the singer’s voice and possibly more. 

They sit in silence, and Stephen thinks they might until the sun has disappeared out of sight if he doesn’t say anything. “Is he dead?”

“No, silenced.” God drops his hand. “Immobilized, too.” His manner shifts from contemplation to scrutiny without any step in between. “Do you have any suggestions on why I shouldn’t evaporate him where he stands?”

Susan wouldn’t like it, but she would never know, and neither of them will tell her. The only people concerned with this decision are god and his sheriff. And the man himself who doesn’t even know the nature of his predicament. God’s rule is absolute and his sheriff offers consultation on the matters of the world but this isn’t about anything more than one man’s failure to mind what song gets stuck in his head. If Victor asks for Stephen’s opinion, he may have it, even when it will do little to sway his murderous mood. A god can’t stand to be challenged and not react. 

“I don’t think a song is worth a human’s life, especially if no one remembers that it is truth and not just a legend.”

“What about sacrilege flung in god’s face?”

“For that, he would have had to see your face.” Stephen is sure he just sealed the man’s fate when god breathes out a laugh. Then he hums and splays his fingers in a wave. The melody picks up again, on a different note. The singer stops and sets out to start again, stumbling through three more wrong notes before coughing. The bursts lose volume with the man walking away, but he still doesn’t find the key. Stephen expects that he won’t ever again.

God picks up his fork and continues to enjoy the fruits of his world.

* * *

Stephen’s feet recognize the feel of Victor’s bedroom floor rugs, and he thinks he would be able to pick it out of all the rooms in the castle with closed eyes by now. Underneath, it’s cold stone as all of the representative room’s floors are too, and no rug can chase that fact off. Victor has little need for extra comforts but then he isn’t the one regularly barefooted here, kneeling or on all fours a lot of the time.

His bed is soft toppings on a rigid mattress, high enough for Stephen to just lie on his back and relax his throat while Victor fucks into it. It feels like the most sumptuous act out of all the things they do. Victor has taken to removing the cuisses along with the codpiece and the cloth when they do it in his private rooms, giving Stephen view of his thighs whenever he moves back far enough.

Stephen, however, is naked within five minutes of his arrival whenever he gets called here. Victor is never hasty with it, just determined and sure of what he wants. What he wants is to see Stephen, all of him. He has been laid out on Victor’s chaise lounge more than once, not knowing if Victor would do more this time than look at him, from the distance of his settee. In the end, he always did more than look. 

When Stephen goes to Victor, he does the undressing himself. The quietness is the most distinguishing feature of those occasions. Not silence—they make plenty of sounds—but the absence of Victor’s sureness, communicating whatever he plans on doing with Stephen with every fiber of his being. It’s an openness, the absence of that energy, replaced by wordless pleasure at whatever Stephen comes up with.

He is careful not to make Victor have to deny him. Only ever removing the parts of the armor that Victor has removed himself before, watching out for Victor’s mood, as he always does, but playing more with it now.

Today, though, is not one of these days. He is bent over the single dresser placed against the wall next to the bed. Usually, he gets folded over the high arm of the sofa or just the bed (and one time onto the windowsill… which still makes his breath catch.) Stephen has tried to work out if this new position is due to Victor’s consideration of his comfort every time the pleasurable fog from what is being done to him lifts enough for coherent thought. The sturdy wood has supported his weight for what must have been hours while Victor played with him, but the pleasure has been too intense for his mind to reach any concrete conclusion.

Stephen doesn’t touch himself, not when he is with Victor and, given the amount of time he is with Victor, not at any other time. He doesn’t have to either. In all cases where Victor calls for him, he leaves satisfied and often on legs that still feel unsure of their gait. When he goes to Victor, he doesn’t want to. It’s not about him. Not that it ever is, but if the god emperor deigns it the right thing to do, Stephen is most gracious to receive. He sometimes thinks about Victor telling him to, to do it himself for his lord’s viewing pleasure or just because he can demand that, and Stephen would follow suit. He never does, and Stephen doesn’t ask him to. Instead, Victor’s warm hands work Stephen, often slowly at first and more rigorous when he gets closer, but always measured and sure. 

Today he has barely touched Stephen’s cock at all. Victor has had him naked and accessible for what feels like hours. Has touched him everywhere. Has worked fingers into him, caressing at times, driving every conscious thought from his mind at others. Even has trailed a finger over his balls and shaft once or twice, but it’s not enough. 

Victor gives him a break, stopping the movement in his ass and resting the other hand on his back. Stephen’s thoughts can spiral outwards from the points that Victor is touching him and that are, oh, so good but never enough, to the rest of his body. The thin layer of sweat that is making it hard to decide if he is cold or hot, the tremble of his hands, the absolute lack of anything touching his dick, the cold surface of the furniture whose highest purpose is being a convenient place for Victor to wreck Stephen.

His brain is taking all the wrong turns now, and Stephen wonders if this could have been the purpose of the dresser all along because Victor does not keep any clothing in his bedroom. What he wears is brought and taken away by servants who make it appear from somewhere in the castle. But the dresser has been here long before Victor made a habit of draping Stephen over any available surface. He always thought it was a prop just there to complete the setting. Minimalism is not Victor’s style. There would be no surprise if it turned out that it was empty, or the drawers didn’t even open. 

In any case, Stephen is glad that he has something to cling to as Victor ends his short reprieve and starts up his movement again. The slide of fingers in his hole is torturously slow but ends with them being pressed against his prostate long enough to hope it might finally drive him over the edge, even if it hasn’t so far. Victor’s other hand trails his spine as if to learn its secrets one vertebra at a time.

“You want nothing but to be touched by me.” Victor’s certainty doesn’t take away from the wonder in his voice. The words are true, but Stephen still can’t parse their meaning. That is what he is here for. That is what Victor has called on him for. 

Victor’s fingers circle a place on Stephen’s ribcage below his shoulder blade. It’s not enough to overtake the sensation of his insides being explored by Victor’s fingers.

“You have a scar there.”

Stephen has a lot of scars left from the accident and some more from years of being the Sorcerer Supreme.

“It’s different from the others. Apart from them. It’s the only one here.” Victor’s words are reverent. God finds purpose in the smallest things, and even if the scar isn’t his creation, it belongs to his world now with everything else. 

The movement of Victor’s hands doesn’t falter, but the pressure on Stephen’s back becomes more insistent. It is as if the hands exchanged the tasks of exploring and caressing from one second to the other. The calmer movement in his hole gets supported by Victor’s thumb tracing his rim. Stephen doesn’t know how Victor can split his attention between his actions when he himself is so overwhelmed just by receiving.

“I explored the possibility of taking away your scars. I know mine are nothing these powers can change.” 

Stephen wishes he could concentrate for even a single second. The significance is trying to break free from somewhere inside him but there is no space left. Victor is filling all of his crevices. 

“As I learned, even in this we are the same. I can’t heal you any more than I can fix myself.”

Stephen has to move, turn around, look at Victor, but his body is heavy from everything he has been given, has gotten used to being an object instead of an actor. Victor’s fingers are buried inside him up to their knuckles and stroking Insistently at his walls, brushing his prostate again and again. The thumb is pushing at the muscle, and he can feel it giving in even more, giving Victor all the space he can possibly ask for. 

With the other hand, Victor holds his shoulder, has apparently lost interest in the scar, the sign of things Stephen had to learn the painful way. The hold is pushing Stephen all the more down on Victor’s fingers, and he thinks that it’s all it is for until armor folds down on him from his ass up, cold steel, ridges, and unseeable rivets. Stephen starts to shudder. Only the placement of the mask’s nose reveals that his face falls where his hand explored before. His god has bowed his head to Stephen’s history, and Stephen comes. 

Stephen is distantly aware of being rearranged, bedded, and cleaned up. There is still the pressure of something wanting to burst free, but it doesn’t. 

When his eyes communicate with his brain again, he looks over to the dresser expecting to still see it covered in his come, but there is no stain on the dark wood. Victor is taking something out of a drawer. His eyes fall on Stephen when he turns around, making to leave. 

The fact that the dresser wasn’t an empty set piece catches Stephen by surprise. Before he can begin to think about the tension that it leaves him with, Victor says, “Stay. I’m going to apply these. It will not take long.” His hands are holding long green pieces of cloth and a small crystal flask. Stephen doesn’t need to answer; both of them know he will do whatever Victor asks of him. God lingers a moment longer, basking Stephen in his attention before leaving for the ensuite.

Tension and post-orgasmic heaviness mix within Stephen. He purposefully relaxes, settling himself into the bed, and chasing away the discomfort. He is glad that he got ordered to stay, leaning into the task of just being where he is, melted onto Victor’s mattress, covered by his blankets, resting against his pillows. He doesn’t move. If anything, even his thoughts are getting slower again.

A door opens and through half-closed lids, Stephen sees Victor, garbed in green from his head down. He manages to pull himself back from the brink of sleep when Victor lies down next to him. His face is covered with the green bandages, and Stephen feels something give inside his chest. He doesn’t wait for Victor to arrange them but crawls into his emperor’s arms, pushing him, so he can put his head down on his chest. He falls asleep to a featherlight laugh trailing off.

Stephen awakens before dawn and lies still as the sun starts to rise and he can see its shine against the towers outside the windows. He hasn’t dared to turn around, scolding himself for the ridiculousness. There is nothing to fear there. Victor let’s go of his hip, falling on his back with a sigh, still fast asleep. The loss of heat gives Stephen a push, and he rolls over, taking in what has been on his mind for hours. 

The bandages form a tight-laced canvas over Victor’s face and neck. There is a small V of skin below them, where the soft green pajamas are not fully closed. Hairs, a little longer than on Victor’s thighs, curl up on skin that has a healthy olive tinge although it never sees the light of day.

Stephen has never turned from knowledge, so he lifts his hands and carefully, carefully traces one of the strips over Victor’s forehead and then his cheekbone. They are much softer than they look, and Stephen wonders if it is luxury or necessity. He bites his lip so much it hurts. These aren’t for vanity reasons. How can he begrudge Victor relief of his pain any possible way?

Victor does not react to Stephen’s touch, still looking comfortable in the dusk. Stephen dares to flatten out his hand, holding onto Victor’s cheek. Even with several layers, the cloth is thin and he can feel the warmth of skin through them. They part where Victor’s mouth is. Stephen’s gaze increasingly lingers on it, the opening a terribly tempting access to lips. 

He pulls himself away. The room is untouched. The servants are of course aware that he didn’t leave after being summoned last night. It is not anything new for them, except for the duration. This is no secret to be kept.

Stephen finds his clothes and calmly dresses. He has his hand already on the door handle when he returns to the bed once more, kneeling, taking god’s hand and touching his lips to it for the briefest moment. Watching for the smallest reaction, his heart beats a staccato rhythm in his chest for long seconds. When there is no reaction, he places the hand carefully back down and leaves.

* * *

It’s late afternoon when Stephen finds Sue and Victor in the gardens. He should return inside and send a servant. Or one of the Thors. Or see if he can take his matter up with Valeria. Instead, he stands in the shadows, watching as Susan holds both of Victor’s hands, looking up at him with shining eyes, smiling as if she can’t imagine things being any better.

They probably interrupted a romantic stroll for this intimate exchange. The afternoon sun is making them both more radiant and with them, the flowerbeds which are in full bloom as if tomorrow they’ll all die. It’s a dainty little scene, right from a picture book.

Susan turns her head. Stephen remembers his dignity and doesn’t try to melt further into the shadows. She smiles, open as always, and beckons him over. He goes, summoning the matters of state that he needs to talk to the god emperor about. He has reason and purpose here, even where Susan can see.

“Stephen.” He sometimes thinks that his name sounds different when she says it now from back before. It is probably a figment of his imagination.

“I see you rarely out of court sessions these days.”

“I have been occupied,” Stephen answers and it’s true. His eyes flick over to Victor, still holding onto his wife’s hand. Everything is as it should be. 

“I understand the importance of your role, but there should always be the time for pleasure.” Stephen wonders for the hundredth time what she knows about. Everything, the answer has to be everything. There is no secret; Victor doesn’t care to make it one.

“I will be gone for a few days. Please make sure Victor doesn’t sink back into brooding.” 

Surprise stacks onto surprise, and Stephen thinks it safe to show some of that. “You are traveling?”

“I’m glad you decided to forego the ‘alone’ at the end.”

“I have learned.”

Susan nods. “I am visiting the wall."

“She is visiting Ben Grimm.” God speaks the name of the rebel as if he wasn’t banned for acting against the order of this world. As if there was space for him being more than a traitor. Susan brings out the grace in him.

“Will you make sure that Victor doesn’t try to redo all of creation in one day?” Her laugh flies lightly into the open air. 

Stephen is sure a smile isn’t expected of him; this is fortunate as he wouldn’t be able to recall the motion. Susan’s levity is too familiar, and Stephen’s body goes through the motion of falling without moving one bit. 

“Of course.” Even the formality he usually hides behind is not forthcoming.

Susan leaves them, after kissing Victor’s cheek and clasping Stephen’s hand shortly, pressure meant to reassure.

“Walk with me.” The awareness that Stephen forgot what he came for blooms when Victor gives them a new task. The gardens are lovely at any time. Nothing dares to be hideous in Victor’s presence.

Silence stretches, and maybe Stephen is not in any position to scrutinize god’s will, but the sheriff needs to know what that will is. “Susan is visiting the wall…”

“Do you think it is foolish to indulge her sense of hope?” Victor poses it as a philosophical question, as if it is not the question of his infallibility. 

“She thinks there is a possibility of redemption?”

“Yes, Susan believes in people. She doesn’t give up on that easily.”

They are passing beneath a low hanging branch of Yggdrasil; the sun blocked for a moment gives Stephen the opportunity to look at Victor without the glistening reflection blinding him. They step back into the light a moment later and he has to avert his eyes to the path before them. 

A couple of ducks land on a pond, ripping its surface with their feet, disturbing the tranquility with their splashing. 

“There are many who have tried to disturb the natural order of things. As it should be. Man needs to struggle or he wouldn’t be better than an animal. That is why the barons rule their kingdoms and may dethrone each other as best they can.”

The paths around the castle gardens are numerous, and the view is different from every single one. Stephen has walked all of them, familiarity with the impossible being nothing new. 

“There is no alternative to Doom. Not anymore. We can’t accept any discordance that might reach Doomstadt—but…”

“You fathom reconciliation?”

“I’m willing to let Susan try.” 

And if she fails, Victor has given her everything still, and nothing has changed. Stephen nods. 

They walk among the trees in the arboretum. Victor halts at a group of conifers, his head tilting up to the sky, measuring trees as he does his subjects.

“Do you know what these are?”

Stephen hasn’t paid detailed attention to the greenery. He steps closer, a slight wind brushing Victor’s cape against his legs. The bark of the trees is smooth, branches shooting off above their heads, rustling in the breeze. The needles are long and soft looking, standing in bushels.

“Latverian pines?”

“They are. Pinus Latverians. The mountains north of Castle Doom were their main habitat before. There are other places they grow now, but these are the only ones close by.”

Victor removes one of his gloves and glides his palm over the trunk before him. Stephen wonders for a moment if they are supposed to be this straight and perfect looking. If it is the upkeep, or if Victor has determined the natural order of things to be his will here as well. 

God’s fingers splay, gripping onto the bark. As if Victor was taking him into his mind, Stephen remembers the times he visited Latveria on one mission or the other. Victor in the place that fitted him like a bespoke piece of clothing. It seemed obvious that this was due to Victor forming it that way, but then Latveria had formed Victor, hadn’t it?

Stephen removes both his gloves, holding onto them with his left. His right, he places over Victor’s hand, stepping between him and the tree. He knows what he wants Victor to hear, the comfort he wants to give him; only the words are out of reach.

“You are the only thing that is left from that world. You are the only one remembering,” Victor says.

Maybe Stephen’s words are superfluous in the end.

Victor’s glove drops to the ground and his second hand settles on Stephen’s back. “Are you sometimes surprised by the things your heart longs after?” Stephen’s heart beats faster as if it wants to tell on him. “We can create anything here. Recreate—”

“But it won’t be the same. A theater prop, missing the spirit and the history,” Stephen answers.

Victor closes the space between them ever so slowly, backing Stephen up against the tree. “Maybe we are holding this world to too high a standard, not giving it the chance to make its own history.”

“Like a cutting from a tree that has been planted in its shadow?” Stephen’s back gets pressed against the pine, the plate of Victor’s armor pressed to his front. 

“Like a grafting that looks hideous at first, but will produce blossoms the rootstock never could.” Victor’s hands roam Stephen’s body as if to find which spot will give him the most purchase. His next words are almost desperate. “I need to have you.” 

He is not sure it is needed, but Stephen nods, and he gets whipped around with a speed he forgot Victor was capable of. But Victor is capable of anything these days. It’s his will that is the limitation to the possible. 

Practiced hands open Stephen’s pants with little fuss, shoving them out of the way. It is not Victor’s usual savoring of the act, but it doesn’t feel less ceremonial. One of his hands is still covered in leather. He strokes Stephen with the bare one, once, twice, and then weighs his cock and balls for a moment. Held like Stephen is, with Victor’s arm pressing them together, it feels imperative to tell Victor. He has thought about it every time the gloves come off. “Please, would you use the other hand? The glove…”

The hand in question snakes down. “You want the glove? Is it the texture or have I been too careful with you?”

Victor passes Stephen’s sex from one hand to the other before the ungloved hand snaps back to support him because his knees are buckling.

“The texture, mostly, but it’s also part of the god emperor keeping this world up.”

The pressure around his balls and cock increases shortly, crossing the line to agonizing for a split second. 

Stephen continues, his mind suddenly open to say what he has been desiring since that first time in Victor’s chambers. “I keep on thinking about the gauntlets. You always wore gauntlets.”

“You would want me to touch you with them?”

“Touch me. Touch my lips, my tongue. Everywhere where you can think to put your fingers.”

“Stephen,” Victor’s voice is rough. For a moment his all-encompassing sureness is broken. Then he presses Stephen forward again. “It can’t wait. This will be rougher than usual.” A short break in which Stephen runs through all that Victor could do that is ‘rougher’. He is a god and there is no limitation. Stephen should be afraid. “I think you might like it.”

He tries for a moment to hold himself up with his hands against the tree, but it’s hopeless. Instead, he lets himself be pressed into the bark, face and pecs. Victor holds on to his hip so his ass is presented for the taking. For a short moment, the cold crotch piece presses into him, and he groans in a way that sounds like begging. 

There is a wet laugh from behind him. “How did I never see this? Another day.” The pressure lets up, and the familiar snap of the latches comes before Victor’s cock is pressing in between Stephen’s cheeks. “I need to feel you now.” He starts to push in more rapidly than he ever has before, but Stephen’s body accepts it just the same, has accepted this as Victor’s proper place long ago. His body is never closed to Victor. It’s all his anyway.

Victor pushes in completely and sinks against Stephen’s back. Stephen can feel the armor through his doublet, thinking about what it would be like if he was naked. Below his stomach where Victor’s hands meet, he can feel the second glove being removed too. Victor’s voice is hushed as if even the trees aren’t supposed to hear him. “I’ll give you anything you want later. Just let me touch you now.”

“Have I ever said no to you?” Stephen asks. He doesn’t know why it’s easier to talk here between the greenery and scattered memories.

“No, you haven’t.” Victor’s hands are stroking him. Over his clothed arms and midriff, his exposed thighs, his cock and balls. The touch urgent, as if to make sure everything is as Victor knows it. “But you also never wanted to.”

No, Stephen never even considered it. “Did that surprise you?”

“It surprised me how little your mind fought you about it. This world brings out new faces in all of us.” Victor moves his hips in small thrusts, never moving them apart more than an inch or two. “I think you wanted it even before.”

Stephen doesn’t answer. It doesn’t matter anymore. The awareness of where they are is sinking in. His face gets pressed into the bark with every thrust, and he is glad that Latveria’s national tree has that smooth surface.

“I remember a time when you went to hell with me. Reluctantly but you still did. I don’t think you ever regretted it.” Victor’s hands hold onto Stephen’s thighs now, the angle somewhat awkward, as Victor has to fold over Stephen to do so, and the precarious balance of their position becomes obvious. Victor could pull his legs away and Stephen would have no chance to hold himself up, but Victor would topple down with him. Stephen’s face would get ripped on the bark and Victor… The light touch of fingers to his balls is enough to pull Stephen back.

“This is so much better. No pretending at distance anymore. No deliberation why fate keeps pulling us together.” Victor releases his grip on Stephen and presses off his back with one hand against the trunk. It allows him to fuck him with more fervor. “I should stop wondering where this companionship ends, if there is leverage mighty enough to force us apart.” 

Stephen can’t concentrate, trying to still his own motion to avoid his face getting rubbed raw. He doesn’t want to change it. 

“Tell me!” Victor demands and Stephen feels like he dropped the ball. He is supposed to follow Victor’s skips in mood or topic, but he has no clue what they are talking about. Victor doesn’t offer anything more either.

The speed of Victor’s thrusts doesn’t change one bit; whatever he wants to hear, the wait doesn’t make him falter.

“I…” Stephen tries, he wants to, but at that moment he has nothing. No thread to pull himself back on, no plan, nothing except the immediate physical reality of Victor and pine trees and the rhythm of getting fucked.

“What is it, Stephen?” Victor’s hand strokes up his hip and flank, with a touch so light it barely registers through the cloth.

Stephen draws in a breath as much as his body allows. He opens his mouth. There has to be a statement, a question to bring them back on track. He knows it is somewhere, just not in that place, in that moment.

“Tell me,” Victor says, so much more tender this time. His right hand holds Stephen’s side, his thumb petting him with the softest touch. Stephen can’t draw his mind away from it. “Tell me what you want.”

Stephen has the answer to that question. It is all that he has left. “You. All of you. As much as I can take. Victor—”

The words streaming out of him get cut short by Victor pulling him up by the shoulders. He pushes all of his weight into Stephen, and they tumble against the tree. Stephen hits it, chest first, pressing all the air out of his body. He is pressed into the trunk by the length of Victor’s body, all of it covered in cold steel; he is perfectly caught and held.

There is no respite; their new position doesn’t allow Victor the depth that he had before, but for every other purpose it is far more intense. The mask is right beside Stephen’s ear so that Victor doesn’t need to do more than whisper. “I do not aim for roughness—”

“Don’t apologize.” Stephen doesn’t want to hear Victor repent. Not for this. Not for anything.

“You like it?” A question this time. 

Assurance is something Stephen has enough of to give. He turns his head towards Victor’s voice, presses the side of his face against the metal there. He lets himself feel everything: Victor at his back, the almost forceful thrusts of the cock in his ass, the way it pushes him into the tree, his dick that is close to getting rubbed raw but now gets wrapped up in Victor’s hand again. He nuzzles into the mask and moans his agreement. 

Victor aspirates “Stephen” and he knows it’s not meant for him but he still keens at it.

It’s only a moment longer, or maybe an infinite series of them, and Victor makes two—three vigorous thrusts, before pushing them both impossibly closer, coming into Stephen, who is nowhere near, which is what this scene called for. Victor rests against him. Stephen finally touches his hand where it rests on his shoulder, and despite them being in contact all over, the small touch puts Victor into motion. 

The release of Victor’s cock out of Stephen should be an undignified affair, but with the way Victor pets his behind at the same time, it isn’t. Stephen’s attempt at stepping away to fix his clothing gets halted by Victor tutting. After that, Victor pulling up the trousers that are pooled around Stephen’s ankles and reaching around him carefully to tug away Stephen’s slowly softening cock with his still-uncovered hands, is almost unsurprising. Stephen allows himself to lean back into him for a moment, before Victor turns to pick up his crotch piece and covers himself. 

Their way back to the castle is filled with warm silence framed by the song of birds and, the nearer they get, the bustling of the structure itself. In the courtyard, Stephen’s inhale, intended for speaking about him taking his leave for now, is interrupted by Victor’s hand on his arm, glove on cloth. “Back in the beginning I chose to not be an absent god. If it was for better or for worse, there are no instances left to tell. However, I wasn’t a present god either.”

“God Emperor…” Sue left Stephen with the task of stopping Victor’s gloomier periods.

“I'm not maudling. This world needed us then, and it needs us now. For that we need to see and know it—feel it.”

Stephen thinks he can still feel his cock pressed against the bark.

“We will leave tomorrow.”

Stephen has a plethora of questions. Victor, imploring him with a set of brown eyes that he has never thought of as warm before, lets him keep them to himself. “Yes, my lord.”

Victor’s hand lingers for a moment longer on his arm before he turns and walks away.

* * *

Portalling their way to Limbo the next morning is well within Stephen’s expectations of the trip. The minimal entourage that follows them is not. A third of the court would make this an official visit to the kingdoms; them going alone, a private visit maybe. This is neither.

A private visit also would avoid certain assumptions as Limbo is very much an active warzone. It can’t be expected of the god emperor to plan his travels around that though. To say Baroness Pryor is spitting mad when she gets called away to the coast while her capital is under attack would be accurate. To say that god doesn’t care even more so. 

Allegiance is sworn again, the baroness is excused, and their party follows the coastline east. Coastal villages that are undisturbed by their lord’s quarrels now receive the dubious blessing of being in the presence of their maker. None of them are stupid enough to be anything but reverential. Offerings and devout displays are numerous; the sighs of relief when they leave echoing. 

They cross the sea east to the Valley of Flame, which Stephen has never visited before. Of course, he knows the land. Knows as little about it as one can having been there on the day of its creation. There is no king, no baron, no ruler, and therefore no need for the hand of a sheriff. One could also argue no need for a visit from the god emperor if one was inclined to argue with an all-powerful, short-tempered entity.

“Of what use is a visit where there is no one to visit, Victor? Where no one can even see that their god is deigning his creation worthy to lay his eyes on?”

“Is the act less significant if there is no witness—besides ourselves?”

“We can’t learn the world intimately inch by inch. So, why spend time watching romping Tyrannosaurs instead of the cities and villages of more civilized domains?”

“All that lives is my subject.” Victor’s attention lies on the dense underbrush before them. A curl of his finger and a wildcat appears as if it intended to show itself. A fast flick and it keels over, dead. “All worthy of my attention.” He kneels down reverently striking down the furry flank.

It’s the picture that comes back to Stephen that night in Victor’s tent. Victor is laid out on his bed, Stephen atop of him and Victor’s hand is holding his side with the same gentle assertiveness. With all of Victor, except for his face, laid bare before him, he thinks anyone lucky who gets his god’s attention in whatever mysterious way it may be.

Their days in Far East are uneventful in a way that feels like Stephen has got his feet right back under him. Then they reach the Warzone.

The former Warzone. Jennifer Walters has renamed the domain after the eternal conflict ended. It’s called the One now which is admittedly on point and pragmatic, as well as inspiring. They stay at the White House which isn’t the actual seat of power as DC is no longer the capital. Too much has happened, is what Walters tells them, and it is also obvious to anyone visiting the domain for more than a few hours. Still, the White House is the most representative building the One has, and power gathers where god holds an audience. There is a stream of superheroes, and after, they even have a gala dinner with the most remarkable of them.

Stephen always knew that the people of Battleworld were not his old colleagues, his friends. He has traveled the multiverse before. He knows how to distinguish between them even if their timeline branched off as recently as the Warzone’s did.

Now, that knowledge feels more settled. He has the utmost respect for these people, empathy even. But they are not his peers. Talking to them now feels more like exploring a foreign culture, their lives and struggles of course important to god’s sheriff but less so to Stephen. Victor’s gravitational pull has more effect on him across the room than the conversation he has with the person sitting next to him. He can feel the weight of Victor’s gaze on him most of the evening. He also sees it whenever he turns his head towards his god, as he does once too often judging by his conversation partner’s reactions.

The meal ends when the god emperor suddenly rises and leaves the table behind without a word. Jennifer Walters dares to step up to him. The discussion, whatever the topic, is short, and at its end, her eyes settle onto Stephen while the god emperor leaves. For a moment he thinks about staying right where he is or even retiring to his designated bedroom that he never expected to actually sleep in. The idea of Victor coming to look for him, maybe even irate about Stephen’s absence is tantalizing.

Not tonight though. He wishes a good night to the people next to him and follows after Victor. The bedrooms are cozier here than at Castle Doom. Representative, of course, but less towering ceilings and thick stone floors, that are only tamed by a hearth fire and a myriad of rugs. Victor is nowhere to be seen when Stephen enters. It would not be appropriate for god to wait for his servant, would it? The mystery of Victor’s absence is easily solved when he re-enters from the bathroom, his gloves already left behind.

“Do you consider it polite to dupe your hostess for coition with your sheriff?”

“I have a feeling she understands.” Victor doesn’t slow his step until he’s next to Stephen and pressing into him. Stephen presses his feet into the carpet and holds his position instead of being swept off his feet. They are impossibly close and any moment one of them will need to take a step back. “If you find someone worth your attention, you use the time you have.”

They are still standing there in that precarious balance and instead of taking the step back or making Stephen do it, Victor lifts his hands to Stephen’s face. One being firm, holding, supporting even, the other brushes his skin tenderly. The feel of scar tissue softened by time and whatever is available to a king, a god, a man of unlimited power, takes Stephen by surprise; it can’t be the first time that Victor has touched his face like that but for the life of him he can’t remember. He doesn’t stand back either, leaning into the touch as if the position they are in is sustainable and not destined to topple them both over. 

Time slows to a trickle but pieces of cloth and armor get removed, and Stephen finally ends up on the bed straining for Victor to join him.

“I thought impatience was my vice.” Victor has the gall to joke when he has disrobed Stephen without the decency to do anything with it. He even turns his back on him! He stands in front of the chest at the foot of the bed, putting one hand on his face and reaching behind with the other.

Stephen can see his own thought process as slow as it is. It takes longer than for Victor to remove the mask. He sees Victor’s face and still doesn’t understand.

Because he doesn’t understand, he is not self-conscious about studying everything that has been hidden to him all this time. Victor’s face is unique. The structure of what people once called handsome is still recognizable at least to Stephen’s trained eye. What the accident added, subtracted is an almost random pattern of holes and welled-up scars. Stephen knows how much it must have hurt. For a moment he wonders if that is what Victor has been hiding for years, the extent to which he can suffer without being broken. Not showing his enemy his greatest strength.

Stephen wouldn’t call Victor handsome; that word belongs to some men, but no man can compare to a god. Victor is unique.

Stephen’s legs spread on their own accord when Victor draws nearer. A hand keeps him from lifting them up too. Instead, Victor settles in between, closing the distance between his face and Stephen’s cock. The first touch of lips jolts realization back in place in Stephen’s brain.

Victor is naked. Completely naked, which Stephen excluded from the possible states of the world on principle. God’s face presses against Stephen’s cock and he thinks he can tell the difference between scar and skin, has practise enough with his own hands.

“Victor.” His voice sounds faint even to his own ears.

“Yes, Stephen?” There is amusement in god’s voice, but also something else. The word gravitas will not make itself malleable enough to fit the situation, but there is no room left for doubt of how much this is a symbol. Victor won’t let there be any.

He doesn’t torture Stephen by halting his actions until there is an answer. He still takes his time mouthing at Stephen’s shaft, his balls, teasing. Stephen knows a reply won’t change anything about that. Still, he is desperate to present Victor with one.

_Why now?_ Stephen knows the answer to that. There they were, in a room full of people, and it has finally sunken in that there is no one there for him but Victor. It is so obvious and profound, and there is a sudden urge to make a jab about it. Although Stephen is not sure if he is the butt of the joke or Victor.

_Thank you._ Oh, Victor would love that one, but this isn’t an act of grace from god.

“I love you.” The words leave Stephen without going through the approval processes that discarded the others. It just manifests, as obvious as the _why_ and as satisfying as a _thank you_.

Victor breathes warmly into the junction of his leg and hip, letting the words settle and rest comfortably around them. “I know.”

“You are not omniscient.”

Victor huffs, and finally takes Stephen’s dick into his mouth. He takes his time, acts with an intricate attention to detail, savors every moment of it in a way that makes Stephen fear that he plans on never doing it again, but then Victor never denies himself anything he truly enjoys. 

There is no doubt he enjoys it. The slow intensity is something that has permeated everything that Victor likes to do to him. It makes it hard to distinguish if Stephen’s arousal is building through the slow but steady attention or just because of how much he knows it is what Victor wants. The technique might be new but Victor knows Stephen’s body better by now than Stephen himself, and he keeps him teetering on the edge of just-not-enough so long that Stephen thinks the sunrise could come before him, but then finally Victor presses his fingers into his perineum and speeds up just a little bit, and Stephen falls. He thinks he might be yelling. The feel of Victor’s mouth around him is perfect, and he wants it to never stop. Victor lets him go before it becomes too much and then he very visibly swallows and Stephen has to close his eyes for the first time since they ended up on the bed.

Victor weighs down the mattress beside him. Stephen rolls toward him like he has done a thousand times now, but when he opens his eyes this time, it’s not to Victor’s mask or even the green bandages he wears to bed every night. It’s Victor.

He is working his own cock, having drawn out his own orgasm until he is done with Stephen. This is familiar too, as everything is, even his face. They breathe in the same space, the air between them getting hot and humid, and again Stephen acts because it just doesn’t come to his mind not to. He rolls over the last bit, the one that they have always kept between them. Their lips lock onto each other, into place. Stephen’s nose fits exactly into a space where part of Victor’s is missing. 

For a moment, all of Stephen’s post-orgasmic lull is gone. He hears himself grunt, trying to devour Victor’s face lips first. Victor laughs into the kiss, which just makes Stephen’s desire grow exponentially. He even dares to bring a hand up to put on Victor’s face and suddenly the laughter is gone. Short seconds later Victor pinches his eyes closed, coming over his hand and Stephen’s body. His lips don’t move anymore against Stephen’s; they part slightly to allow Victor’s pants. Stephen covers them in small kisses.

He drinks in the view before Victor gets up again to apply the bandages. When he wakes up in the morning the mask and Victor are gone.

* * *

They leave their entourage behind after that. Moving on, just sheriff and god, to Weird World. They stay at Morgan LaFey’s fortress in the middle of a lava lake for several days. There is no doubt that it is to annoy her more than for any kind of amenities.

Traveling around after is like magical sightseeing. Herds of Devil Dinos, every kind of shark a five-year-old can think of, and actual dragons. Traversing the dense, untouched nature of the island is not practical with more than two people. That may be why they are alone now. It could also be that their focus is so much on pleasure that even the pretense of this being a formal outing would have been too much.

They spent weeks on discovering everything there is from a crystal labyrinth to Eyemazons and flying pirates, from a pink river that kills any animal getting within 10 feet of it (actively killing it, as in getting out of its riverbed and bludgeoning it to death with pink water) to a Hawk Squatch.

If they encounter anything that doesn’t recognize the danger and makes an honest attempt at attacking them, Victor shows no mercy, but overall, they peacefully observe the natural wonders, and the wonders observe them right back.

They are settled on top of a cliff in a small cabin that wasn’t there when they arrived the day before. The view over the green gorge below from where Stephen is sitting on a small rock is made only more breathtaking by the silver dragon that has been circling in the distance. The sheer magic of it and the fact that he has been watching this exact sunset for the last three days gives Stephen’s mind sudden room for contemplating the unsustainability of it all; how they will need to go back to their real lives after what is at best a vacation. 

It’s not a new thought and not changing anything either, but here and now, it wants to make itself heard and seen, as if to make sure that Stephen doesn’t forget.

Victor’s return is heralded by his steps. Stephen gets up, ready to leave the world to contemplate itself for a while. His motion halts when he sees Victor.

He is wearing green—a tunic and not just a loincloth—over an armor that is darker and doesn’t shine with the light of the divine. His voice is the same. “Strange.”

It feels like slipping into an old glove, familiar and unseemingly tight at once, but after a few movements, the restriction feels just about right. 

“Doom?” A standoff that is so familiar, Stephen can’t tell if it is a repetition or just the principal matter of it.

“Are you going to resist for propriety’s sake or can we waive that as we have no audience?”

Stephen thinks; a little resistance would really fit the mood.

“Don’t delude yourself, _Victor_.” His name tastes so different. Calling on one of the old spells, one that isn’t immediately tied to god’s power, is ridiculous at first but seeing it whisk around his opponent, green cloak beating forcefully, it has its charm.

Victor doesn’t use his powers to quell the storm, only those old familiar gestures, his gauntlets magnificent in swiping the attack away, and then he comes for Stephen.

They fall back into it as if it hadn’t been years in which they grew into different kinds of beings. The exchanges get faster and faster, birds flee, and the world seems to quiet down, watching expectantly.

The lights draw attention from some of the magical critters of the realm, but they both don’t dare to let their attention wander to the wildlife. Stephen knows that Victor is playing with him, could smother his whole arsenal with one gesture. He is however indulging Stephen, and with what they are willing to use there is no easy winner here. It makes Stephen’s neck prickle because indulgence or not, Victor’s patience is not endless. Doom’s even less so. 

He takes one step back, there is no physical change in the ground or the air, but he can’t take another. Can’t move a finger or call on a spell. Victor leisurely walks up to his caught prey.

“Just so you won't tell me later it was cheating, because the Sorcerer Supreme can’t admit his fair defeat by his superior. It’s not powers.” He cants dark mask and green hood at two contraptions hidden in the bushes. “It’s science blocking certain neural transmissions. It’s reversible, don’t worry.”

A laugh is trying to fight it’s way out of Stephen despite his neural incapacity. With all those powers at play, Victor resorted to what is basically a snare. And Stephen fell for it.

He gets hefted up over Victor’s shoulder, as the field subsides. Control of his muscles still feels sluggish. He couldn’t fight Victor off even if he wanted to.

The door of the hut shuts Weird World out and they could be anywhere. Even back in Latveria, back in New York, back home, back before—

Stephen’s back hits the hard wooden table without any warning and air and thoughts leave his body at once. In all that time, with all that magical and physical power, Victor has never been anything but erring on the side of gentle. He takes and reigns, and part of it was sweet torture but never through pain. This is a whole different thing, something new after all.

“Now, that we have done away with the farce out there,” Victor’s hand, his gauntlet, kneads Stephen’s thigh, “you can choose if you want it rough or if you’re giving up.”

“Rough,” Stephen spits out, his tongue still not feeling all the way comfortable in his mouth. If Victor is offering, Stephen will take it all. There is no warning before his pants get ripped away, his skin exposed to the table beneath and those gauntlets of Victor. Cold steel is digging into his soft flesh, and a sigh escapes him before he remembers what they are supposed to be playing.

Victor’s laugh is melodic and acidic, and for a moment, Stephen can see it. The same situation a decade ago when it would still have meant something darker. It does nothing to quell his arousal.

One gauntlet—damn, the gauntlets—presses down at his pelvic bone while the other slowly finds every button on his tunic and pops them off one by one.

“Which story will you tell yourself after, doctor? That you didn’t want it but I am indeed better than you, overpowering you was just that easy?” Another button makes a plinking sound on the wood floor somewhere behind Stephen. “Or that you could have bested me if you only wanted to, but you agree to being here? Being _this_? Which part will you lie to yourself about? What imagined truth do you hold less dearly?” A swipe of gauntlet throws the tunic wide open and shortly catches on a nipple. Stephen has to bite his lip, but it does nothing to keep him silent. “It obviously won’t be the former.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Doom.” Recalling the way he looked at Victor once upon a time is not hard but surreal. “We both know what this is.”

“And what is it, dear doctor?” Victor’s steel hand is exploring a path up, for a moment putting enough pressure on Stephen’s carotid artery that he can feel his own heartbeat, chasing the answer from the tip of his tongue. 

After too much time, he answers, “Just another one of your ridiculous superiority games.”

Victor hums, considering. Stephen can only pay attention to the path the gauntlet is painting over his very breakable body. 

His head gets thrown around, when Doom yanks him up to his feet by the tunic, tearing that last bit of cover away and turning him around with the same motion. He has to support his own weight suddenly again and finds that his muscles are able to, but only for a moment before he gets pressed against cold metal, covered by cloth. Victor’s arms wrap around him, his hands holding on to his neck and hip, close enough that Victor only needs to whisper now for Stephen to be able to hear.

“Tell me then, who is winning?”

“Who says I’m playing?” There should be a reward for Stephen being able to answer at all. 

Victor does his best to change that and entangles Stephen’s nipple between two steel-wrapped digits. The pain registers with a moment’s delay, but sharp and clear, making way in Stephen’s mind, covering whatever more apt comebacks he might have had.

“Maybe if this is the game, you are not the opponent but the game piece?” 

All Stephen wants to do is agree, but even that is cut short with Victor’s second gauntlet grabbing Stephen’s cock. He makes an involuntary noise that is dangerously close to a sob. The cold metal makes him want to flinch away on instinct, but he has no chance with the bulk of Victor still behind him; it is heavenly. 

“It’s what you wanted for a long time, isn’t it?” Victor’s thumb strokes his delicate skin; Stephen can feel the smallest ridges on the joint. “Thinking about it, asking for it, all but begging for it.”

He is not sure which version of him Victor is talking to. It matters little. Purley swallowing feels like a monumental task. Again he doesn’t get to answer.

“Don’t worry you will get it. All of it.”

It’s torture and rapture when Doom finally wraps his hand around Stephen’s balls none too gently. Stephen doesn’t have to plead; Victor is giving it all to him as if he can look right into him. The thought is weirdly liberating and horrific at once. Luckily, Stephen doesn’t have to contend with it for long as an iron-clad arm glides higher, pulling him taught over Doom’s front, making him scramble to his toes, to keep on breathing. 

He can’t see his erection anymore but he has no doubt it’s there. His arousal is telling on how much he is gone on every touch of steel, on every hard, ungiving inch of armor pressing into him, how much it isn’t about Victor coveting the feel of Stephen—can’t be with the armor in between—but about the thought of Victor taking from him, of not giving one bit of himself while getting everything from Stephen.

He is getting pulled as high as his feet will let him push, and Victor’s hand is wandering lower, pulling fingertips over his cock, then stroking his scrotum, pushing upwards on the down curve, making Stephen try to twist away only to find it as impossible as every time before. Then it pushes into his perineum and for a moment it doesn’t hurt, leaving him even more dizzy. The way he is panting is suddenly all he can focus on.

“I think I have amused you enough now.” Victor’s hand slips deeper just brushing the edge of his asshole, and suddenly, Stephen feels like jolting from slumber. His movements are still just bruising himself against Doom’s unmovable limbs, but then they give, and air fills Stephen’s lungs only to be expelled right away when his sternum hits the wood of the table. Doom’s hand is at his neck pressing his face into the grain, but that isn’t the one he is worried about. The one he doesn’t feel is— It lands on his ass with a smack, probably not more than an amusing prelude to Doom for what he is about to do.

Maybe Stephen has also thought about this, loved to think about those gauntlets anywhere, but fantasy and reality are still different things for those who aren’t god. The gauntlets are the genuine original article as far as Stephen can tell. They are not made for this. Aren’t made for anything Doom has used them for this far but this—with rivets and layered joints—Stephen scrambles to get hold of the arm on his neck. He isn’t as immobilized as before. He manages to grip, and Victor’s battle plan seems to be interrupted.

“What now? Showing nerves? Or trying to preserve your virtue after all? It’s really too late for that, doctor.” 

With both hands, Doom wrangles his arms down on his back where he can easily hold them with just one hand. The second takes its time, caressing Stephens back and sides, his ass on the way down. He is enjoying the way Stephen trembles, trying to find a way to move his hips away.

“Shhh, it won’t take long. As long as you don’t make it too interesting.” There is the sound of an old fashioned stopper being removed from a bottle, and at least oil is pouring down between Stephen’s cheeks. It feels like relief but doesn’t take any of the dread away. He still is going through this, it will just not be even worse than it has to be.

Steel fingers trail over his hole, once, twice, and Stephen’s erection pressing into the wood of the table almost commands more attention than the violation about to happen. Then a finger breaches the barrier that firmly exists in Stephen's head but surely not in Doom’s. The tip is smooth. His breathing must be very heavy as it registers as something else with Doom. “All that theater only to sigh at the tiniest bit of me in you?”

Stephen wants to disagree to not give up on that last bit of resistance he still can exert, but he is mesmerized by the knowledge that there is merely an inch of that smooth tip before— The plating marking the first knuckle glides into him smoothly.

“What’s the matter, doctor? No more of those sweet sighs? You seem tense.” Instead of pulling out, Doom pushes deeper and deeper until the other fingers press into Stephen’s scrotum. 

Stephen’s breath against the table heats his own face. Short puffs that do nothing to give him any respite. He counts six of them with nothing happening, then just a slight turn, a rivet just there sitting against his sphincter. 

Doom is playing with his fear, sees it for what it is, and enjoys it.

“Get it over with!” Pressed out between the clenching of teeth, Stephen isn’t sure if the words are even intelligible.

“As you wish.”

The tension that the words cause in Stephen is the opposite of advisable. It takes him several more breaths to force relaxation. Doom doesn’t rip the finger out as he could, the pace is as measured as on the way in, the ridges of the plating are also not sharp and so isn’t the pain. It still hurts. 

“You should know that this isn’t supposed to be the best there is to come. Who would put the climax in the second act?”

“Is it all just theatrics to you?”

“I’m not the one hiding his desires here.” Victor’s gauntlet tips are probing the muscles—it feels like three or four of them—but the certainty of torture is gone for the moment. They are apparently not there yet.

Tips dip in and out and Stephen’s hips press back. He doesn’t care for Doom to draw this thing out, for his dread to be played with. A dark chuckle is accompanied by fingers pressing more insistently than before, more than one but definitely not all four of them, rocking back and forth, smooth so smooth for long moments and then, ridge by ridge by ridge, in and out, agony in the smallest doses, calculable in their timing, giving Stephen’s body opportunity to anticipate. His breath is forced into the rhythm and if anything exists outside of it, it doesn’t penetrate Stephen’s mind. The single peaks of pain flow into another, into a carpet of sensation, and Stephen gets carried by it, through what must be a long time but for him is only measured by how little pain and terror still register as that and how much they flow over into delirium.

His whole upper body gets jostled, his cheek drawn through a wet spot on the table. Victor has used the grip on his arms to get his attention. Awareness of the ache in his shoulders sinks in with the conjecture that Victor must have said something to him.

“Resistance now is not talking to me, doctor? Oh, you hurt me.”

A last time, the gauntlets enter Stephen, and pulling them out does have a finality that makes him want to weep and laugh at the same time. He doesn’t feel enough in control of his body to express either. 

“Refusing to show any reaction, too? How far are you willing to take this?”

Another shove and his hands glide off his back and thump onto the wood. No steel is touching Stephen anymore. He holds onto the sound of clasps being opened, familiar enough to be recognized. 

A pause in which he waits for steel to press him into the table again, but Victor is waiting for something else. A release of air through this mask is not familiar and finally the sound of metal on metal moving, but instead of the press of Victor’s cock in between his cheeks, forcing its way into Stephen’s bruised flesh, he gets whirled around in a manner he can’t follow. He ends up with his legs slung around the armor, tangling with the cloak, and his back on the table again.

“All that work just to end up here again.” Stephen’s words sound slurred even to him. There is an emotion in the eyes behind the mask but his memory refuses to place it, and he can’t chase the thought, because he is split open the next moment. He groans. 

The gauntlets that made the sensation what it is are now supporting his legs, keeping them where Victor wants them to be; Victor holding him up, making it impossible for Stephen to fail him.

The pain is steady, throbbing, melts together with the sensation of those steel plates on his thighs, reminding him; Victor did that, put those gauntlets into Stephen when he thought it would leave him ripped and bloody. He moans without reserve.

Doom laughs at him. “Are you finally there?” His left lets go and comes up to brush over Stephen’s forehead, as short as his hair is he is sweaty enough that it sticks. He has to hold his leg up with his own muscles now, giving being fucked a different emphasis and another moan, just as wanton, leaves his mouth. “No more acting?”

Stephen doesn’t know the answer. It doesn’t matter anymore. 

Ending up pressed against Victor in a seated position, Stephen is held in his arms while pain is radiating from where Victor is still taking from him, giving to him all he has got; something doesn’t fit the picture, but it is beyond Stephen to single it out. It doesn’t matter.

Victor pulls him impossibly closer so that his face is pressed against the golden metal clasps of Victor’s mantle. The thrusts build up until Victor comes with whispers dispersed between groans, nothing in particular telling Stephen anything but all together blaring, if only he knew what.

Victor keeps them still for a long time. No movements, no words. Sensations other than the ache in Stephen’s ass and the soreness of his limbs creep upon him. Most tiresome of all his own erection, half-mast but slowly gaining in enthusiasm. He reaches to free it from where it got tangled up in Victor’s tunic but gets caught in a steely grip. 

“I haven’t heard you say it yet.” Victor’s voice is low. “Tell me that you wanted it. That you are still craving more of … it.”

“Or?”

Victor puts some distance between their torsos, still holding onto Stephen, not moving out from between his legs.

“Do you believe that your sexual gratification is a given?”

“Previous evidence suggests that.”

The laughter is again all Victor, with nothing of the edge that Doom’s held. It still cuts at something in Stephen’s core.

* * *

They decide to leave the next day, even if Weird World could have produced wonders for a lifetime of exploration and Victor seemingly never will be done with exploring Stephen. 

From Utopolis, Stephen looks back one last time on the island floating in the sky. “It’s an amazing place.”

“It is. I did good.” Stephen can’t believe that Victor sounds teasing, but he does.

“ _We_ did,” he answers.

“Yes, we did.”

* * *

At King Charles’ court, they reunite with the royal entourage. The normalcy of Battleworld envelops them again while residing in the palace in Westminster surrounded by X-Men. Victor’s bedroom there reminds Stephen of home.

In a few days’ time, they are taking a ship back to Doomstadt.

The travel takes whatever time god sees appropriate, and he is not done with their excursion quite yet. On the third day, when Stephen joins him in his cabin (realistically their cabin as they never went through assigning Stephen his own) he proposes a change of plans.

“I haven’t seen your island since we created it.”

Victor is relaxed, and Stephen can’t find any tension in himself in response. It’s a simple request even if it isn’t framed as one.

“I can tell the Captain to make a stop there.”

“Tell them to plan only to have us disembark. We can make our own way back to Doomstadt from there.”

Just the two of them; that is what it would always come down to.

The kraken trailing the waters around the island doesn’t allow the ship to draw nearer than a few hundred yards. Of course, either Stephen or Victor could change that but they decide to have the crew ready the gig and make their own way for that last part.

The disappearance of the ship over the horizon is sped up by Victor, Stephen has no doubt. For their own advancement, Stephen picks up the oars.

“You know that that is quite unnecessary.”

“Let me have my little bit of purpose here.” For a moment a glint in Victor’s eyes makes Stephen think he will argue further, but instead he inclines his head and lets himself get rowed to the cliffside.

The kraken is one of the few creatures that does not realize its mistake before attacking them, and it ends up torn apart, tentacle pieces floating all around them, its blood coloring the foam on the waves crashing against the rock light blue.

They step onto land, with some help from Stephen’s magic. The entrance from the seaside is near impossible otherwise, just as it should be. Victor throws a last look back out at sea. “I will get you a new one.” 

“I don’t think it will be necessary.”

They ascend to the top of the cliff first, ignoring the sanctum as if it isn’t glaring at them.

Standing on the green expanse looking towards Doomstadt, their cloaks flapping in the wind, Stephen thinks too long about breaching the distance until Victor says, “Why don’t we go inside?” Stephen nods.

Inside the Sanctum, for a moment, their roles are what they are supposed to be again. Stephen the eye, explaining what has washed up on Battleworld over the years that isn’t allowed to exist out there. Artifacts, the biggest of which is a vessel of some kind. Some recordings of people remembering things in the beginning before it got droned out by time and their new reality called Doom. Everything pieces of what was but can’t be anymore.

There is a sense of shared nostalgia, weaker here than it was in the woods of Doomstadt. But this is the place where memories go to be forgotten, and so they are maybe even doing good in indulging them. They are the only ones who are able to do so because they know why they can’t be out there. However, there are only so many derelicts and their tour comes to a close.

“Is this it?” Victor asks when Stephen replaces the reality stone from the Valley of Doom in its space. 

“There is the basement.” He never found a name for it. Why name what you will never talk about?

“Is there anything of interest there?” 

For a moment Stephen is sure Victor knows. That everything was just the long game, the longest game. A ploy to make him admit, submit, but Victor would not need to do any of that. He could crush the island, crush Stephen, make sure no one even remembered that he ever was, kill every version of him and erase the possibility of him out of existence.

If it is a ploy, it is the most gentle in the history of strategic minds.

“Yes, there is.”

“Lead ahead.”

The door opens for the key as it is supposed to, no hitch in something designed, built, and then almost forgotten. Stephen kills the projection before it can speak up, muttering “Memento mori” under his breath. 

Victor walks past him into the cavernous space, at first past the beasts that are guarding the two things Stephen has held onto and needed to let go of for all this time.

When he turns around, his eyes are set like cut stones in his face. Does he know already? Does Stephen have a moment more before taking the fall he set up for himself all those years ago? Again the time he spends asking himself is all that has been left to him.

Victor steps up to the right beast without hesitation, pulling the gauntlet out of its resting place. “A full set.” His tone is measured, god’s wrath not yet called upon. “When did you find them?” 

“Right in the beginning.”

“You hid them?” 

The question hurts more than any amount of anger could. Stephen wants it to be over and for them to never get there at once.“Victor, you know I did.”

“If you ever intended to use them, you could have done so a long time ago.” God making excuses for him.

“They aren’t intended for me.”

Finally, god looks upon him, measures him, sees him. Knowledge settles itself heavily in the space between them.

It is hurt that is written all over Victor. “Why?” Stephen has done this back when this world was created and every moment since then.

“Because I never lost hope,” he answers. He has never lied to Victor. 

“You chose me.” Not a question because Victor knows. He has no doubt; he also never lost hope, was sure where everything would lead. 

Stephen looks within himself for denial, for the urge to tell him that it isn’t true. He’s got nothing. The words ‘because it was the only choice left’ echo through his head, but he has never lied to Victor. “This isn’t the natural state of the world, Victor.”

“No, it isn’t. Its natural state is deceased, erased as if it never was and everything within it dead—you dead.” It sounds like it’s the first time Victor is considering the possibility. Testing out the words on his tongue, as he has tested every other possibility of Stephen on there before.

“But if we could go back? I can’t ask that of you.” That is the point they are at. They know the other’s decision before the question ever made itself heard.

Silence spreads itself over them, calm in its appearance, smothering in its texture.

When Victor speaks, it is as decisive as anything he ever said, but Stephen knows him. “We can’t go back. This is where we are meant to be.”

“You are still not omniscient.”

“You were there! We did this. You can’t wash your hands of this, Stephen.” There is the rise in Victor’s voice he has been waiting for. Stephen allows himself to search for the truth in the accusation. Admits all his sins to himself before laying them bare.

“Maybe I wanted to, but not anymore. You saved the world, Victor. Maybe not ours, maybe not all of it, but everything there is, is because of you.” He needs him to know that, and he senses he doesn’t have a lot of time left for that.

“So, this is your way of showing that? That you finally believe? Confessing and hoping for forgiveness?”

“You deserve all of my dedication, Victor, my devotion. But should there ever emerge someone who can make a change, I owe them the world. It deserves better than this.”

Victor throws the gauntlet back onto its pillow. “Better than me, you mean.”

There is no time for hesitation left, so Stephen steps closer. “Better than us.”

“So, that’s how far we go?”

“You can scatter the stones, Victor. Make them impossible to find.” Stephen takes another step, past the open stone mouth, not letting his eyes off Victor for a second. “But you know that you can’t destroy them and that they always get found.”

“Is that it? You beat me, no matter what happens now? No matter what I do to you?”

“There is nothing to beat you at. It’s not about us.” Only a body’s width of distance is left between them. Victor doesn’t retreat. “This all that I can offer you, Victor. It is all I am.”

“You balked from power when it was offered to you.”

Stephen nods.

“You chose me.”

He nods again.

“I thought that if you didn’t share the power, you might at least carry the memory with me. Knowing of the past, choosing this future like no one else can.“

Stephen brings a hand up to Victor’s head, glove and mask between them, the touch only a memory now.

“I won’t burden you with this knowledge any longer.”

Stephen has never seen that look in Victor’s eyes before, tries to find the reference but his head feels empty. Before he can ask, Victor lifts his own glove to Stephen’s face, already glowing with eternal power. “Goodbye, Stephen.”

* * *

One of the more arduous tasks of being the Sheriff of Agamotto is getting god’s attention when it is needed. One would assume his right hand would see more of the god emperor’s presence but his time is precious and what he does with it is too complex for simple men to judge.

Finally, Strange gets summoned to a balcony, where god stands in silent contemplation. He waits to be addressed.

Finally, god speaks. “What is so urgent that it can’t wait until our next council with the foundation?”

“An artifact has been found in the Monarchy of M, my lord.” 

God’s attention is captured enough that he holds out a hand, expecting for Strange to have brought the offending object directly to him. He has. The polished yellow stone lies within god’s glove like a tiny sun, breaking the light to paint on the white leather. Strange has to force his attention away from the picture.

He starts, “The stone was found in the possession of–”

“It doesn’t matter which of the petty schemers had it.” 

Strange listens. He can’t discern god’s wills, and any desire he might have to do so, he quells as soon as it befalls him. He has to listen like every other of god’s subjects.

“It’s an offense that we can’t ignore. There have been too many over the years and the Monarchy of M is volatile on its best day.”

“Summoning the baron–”

“Punishing one individual won’t do, Sheriff. It might be time to amputate one rotting limb so the body can thrive. Don’t you agree?”

His opinion is not something god usually demands of him, so Strange searches deep within himself before answering. The artifacts are dangerous but only in their respective domains. It is known. There is little to worry about, especially now it has been apprehended. He wants to say as much but finds that he can’t. The feeling of his lungs inflating beyond their capacity, sends him into a state of panic before he hears himself say, “Yes, sire.” A numbness creeps upon him and the feeling subsides, replaced by emptiness. Late, he notices god’s eyes resting on him.

“Sheriff, you know Latverion far better than most. It is born out of conflict and conflict is its destiny, but it is also beautiful beyond compare.”

Strange isn’t sure that god’s eyes have ever rested on him for such a long while.

God continues, “Its creation was done in a crucible. But I did good.”

Strange waits for him to continue, silence drawing itself out.

A sigh, and then, “Let’s raze the Monarchy of M.”

Strange nods.

**Author's Note:**

> I love comments. ❤


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